I let him go in first.  The sickly gas flame was there on duty, undaunted, waiting for the end of the world to come and put it out.  I think that the black-and-white hall surprised Ortega.  I had closed the front door without noise and stood for a moment listening, while he glanced about furtively.  There were only two other doors in the hall, right and left.  Their panels of ebony were decorated with bronze applications in the centre.  The one on the left was of course Blunt’s door.  As the passage leading beyond it was dark at the further end I took Senor Ortega by the hand and led him along, unresisting, like a child.  For some reason or other I moved on tip-toe and he followed my example.  The light and the warmth of the studio impressed him favourably; he laid down his little bag, rubbed his hands together, and produced a smile of satisfaction; but it was such a smile as a totally ruined man would perhaps force on his lips, or a man condemned to a short shrift by his doctor.  I begged him to make himself at home and said that I would go at once and hunt up the woman of the house who would make him up a bed on the big couch there.  He hardly listened to what I said.  What were all those things to him!  He knew that his destiny was to sleep on a bed of thorns, to feed on adders.  But he tried to show a sort of polite interest.  He asked:  “What is this place?”

“It used to belong to a painter,” I mumbled.

“Ah, your absent friend,” he said, making a wry mouth.  “I detest all those artists, and all those writers, and all politicos who are thieves; and I would go even farther and higher, laying a curse on all idle lovers of women.  You think perhaps I am a Royalist?  No.  If there was anybody in heaven or hell to pray to I would pray for a revolution—­a red revolution everywhere.”

“You astonish me,” I said, just to say something.

“No!  But there are half a dozen people in the world with whom I would like to settle accounts.  One could shoot them like partridges and no questions asked.  That’s what revolution would mean to me.”

“It’s a beautifully simple view,” I said.  “I imagine you are not the only one who holds it; but I really must look after your comforts.  You mustn’t forget that we have to see Baron H. early to-morrow morning.”  And I went out quietly into the passage wondering in what part of the house Therese had elected to sleep that night.  But, lo and behold, when I got to the foot of the stairs there was Therese coming down from the upper regions in her nightgown, like a sleep-walker.  However, it wasn’t that, because, before I could exclaim, she vanished off the first floor landing like a streak of white mist and without the slightest sound.  Her attire made it perfectly clear that she could not have heard us coming in.  In fact, she must have been certain that the house was empty, because she was as well aware as myself that the Italian girls after their work at the opera were going to a masked ball to dance for their own amusement, attended of course by their conscientious father.  But what thought, need, or sudden impulse had driven Therese out of bed like this was something I couldn’t conceive.